take me home to my heart
by coffee-stained lips
Summary: But on her left hand is Theo's purity ring, and it can't be taken farther. / Blaise&Daphne. For the "Pairings Request" on NGF. Oneshot.


**Written for the Pairings Request thread over on the NextGen Fanatics forum. I was given the pairing DaphneBlaise with the prompts hurt, purity, green, shattered, & best friend by siriusgirlstar. So, thank you! :)**

Daphne Greengrass is a heartbreaker.

Everyone knows it, and she certainly looks like one: all silky black hair that falls over her forehead in wispy bangs and stirringly light green eyes that could break a man's heart if he just thought about them. She's quite beautiful, and sends boys into a frenzy, even non-Slytherin boys, and she doesn't even act like it – she focuses on her academics a lot, and she may even be considered the Slytherin Granger if that wasn't so much of an insult.

Blaise would like to have the honor of being the boy she wants, the one who can call her beautiful to her face and so many other things with an actual chance she'll feel the same way about him. But even though her eyes break people easily, her heart is made of glass and one touch could leave her shattered. (Draco's already put a minor crack in it for preferring her younger sister – _by two years_ – to her.)

He still wishes, though, she'd give him a shot, even if he'd be the worst for her because while her heart is see-through glass, his is lost somewhere and there'd be nothing for her to latch onto if they tried anything together.

.

He's the last one to be Sorted, out of the entire year, and it raises his blood pressure because there's food already on the table and nobody's even paying attention to him at all, which is entirely unacceptable – he's a _Zabini_, for Merlin's sake, and they should be _reveling_ at the chance for him to be in their House.

He struts pompously up to the stool, sits, and Professor McGonagall places the Sorting Hat upon his head. It doesn't take long for the cry of "SLYTHERIN!" to escape it, and there a few cheers from the green-and-silver table and good-natured claps from the rest, even though they aren't too happy for another Slytherin classmate. He just smirks and slides in between two fifth-year boys, who are snorting down their pumpkin juice.

He lifts his head at the mentions of his name ("Welcome, Zabini," "Slytherin's the best, don't forget, mate," and "Yeah, I'd rather have you than Fancy-arse Potter" among them), smiles knowingly, and then he catches a girl, his age, staring at him from across the table. Her eyes are the first noticeable things, how bright green they are and how they twinkle in the light of the candles. He's almost too stunned to hear the chatter around them, so intense are they, but he knocks himself out of his reverie long enough to grin at her.

"Like what you see?" he asks her. She stares at him stilly a moment, before rolling her eyes and he feels like she upsets the balance of nature when they move, but he can only remain surprised as a derisive snort escapes her lips.

"You wish," she sneers, "Us Greengrasses have too much respect to hang with blokes like you."

"If you respect me so much, I understand why you wouldn't want to annoy me." he says, so convincingly she thinks he might be _that_ arrogant and stupid. "But, really, I'm Blaise Zabini." Her eyes trace him, overlooking his every detail before she too smirks, quite deviously, and says,

"I know, and I'm Daphne. Tell me, Zabini, how's your mummy? The men still pay good money for her?" There's a chorus of "ooh's" and "ouch's," and he would like to rip the smirk on her face right off but simultaneously he wants to kiss it and let her green eyes burn into his brown.

"You know something, Greengrass?" he says, "This is the start of a beautiful friendship."

.

And they are friends after it all, perhaps even _best_ friends. She tutors him and he helps her with Theodore Nott, because the poor boy's been head over heels for a few years now (as have many). They tease each other, throwing malicious comments back and forth that would normally result in some sort of brawl, and sometimes they cross the border into flirting, but on her left hand is Theo's purity ring (yeah, right, Blaise thinks bitterly) and it can't be taken farther.

But he knows all her secrets, all her goods (all both of them) and bads (too many to list), what makes her tick, what annoys the hell out of her – generally he knows _her_, better than Nott or her sister or anyone, and it's the only thing that Blaise smiles at anymore.

.

He doesn't really see her as anything different than a best friend until one night. He's been up for awhile in the common room, studying by the candlelight, because Draco forbade him from using his wand in bed, and he's relieved when he sees her coming at him from the upstairs dormitories – that is, until he sees her face, sunken and white and her alarming eyes opened too wide to be good.

"Daph?" he says, closing his book and looking over at her. His voice is soft and gentle, _extremely_ rare in such a full-blooded Slytherin as he, but with her he changes tremendously fast, and that may not be good. "You okay?"

She doesn't regard him for a full two minutes, before inclining her head his way, and he recognizes the glitter in her eyes to be tears, and before he knows it she's collapsed on the sofa with him, burying her face in his robes and crying. He just kind of sits there for a moment (Zabinis aren't real touchy-feely) but then awkwardly hugs her, rubbing circles on her back and he thinks, fleetingly, if she weren't crying it'd be nice to freeze this moment in a picture frame.

When she tones down and edges away, he happily removes his arms from around to lay on the back of the sofa instead. She doesn't look different, or better, just still so stock-still and pale – even her eyes have lost some color.

"Greengrass," he intones, "spit it out." Daphne turns to look at him, and Blaise notices her lip quivering, which is so unlike her – she's strong-willed and bullheaded, a girl built up of smirks and money, who leaves destruction in her wake. She makes other people quiver, tremble, under the pressure.

"Is it Nott?" Suddenly his fists clench and his teeth grit, and the boy's face flits through Blaise's mind and it makes him want to punch the living daylights out of him. Even more so when Daphne's head tilts down and then up, very, very slightly.

"I'm…I'm not _angry_ with him, per se," she whispers, "It's…I didn't…" Her fingers twist the purity ring on her finger. She sighs, dramatically (as usual). "I thought it'd be _different_."

"Thought _what'd_ be different?" Blaise asks, and there's an edge to his voice because he _knows_ what she's talking about, just with the way she eyes the ring around her bony finger and how dull her irises have turned (only when she's sad, only when she's scared). Daphne simply sighs, and removes the ring from her hand, holding it in her palm with delicacy as though it has ferocious teeth.

Then there's a flip of her hair, a sly smirk, and she says "Better head to bed, Zabini – we all know you're going to fail the exam anyhow." She gets up and goes to the girls' dorms, and as he catches the hem of her skirt swish up the stairs, there's a sudden tug at his belly and his heart has accelerated and he wants to murder Theo in a hundred-and-one separate ways that are equal in their painfulness.

It's then he realizes, it's that little bitch that's stolen his heart.

.

He sees them sit together on the sofa, and Theo's hands are all over her and it makes Blaise want to hex him six times over. Daphne laughs and she grins, but Blaise sees in her _brightbright_ green eyes there's an ache inside of her. And that's getting a little deep coming from him, but he can _tell_.

He doesn't think Theo's trying to hurt her; they're just on two different ends of the spectrum and Daphne's acting like they're on the same page, but really they're chapters apart from one another. And she loves Theo, and Theo loves her, but it's a bittersweet romance because Blaise sees her getting hurt every time Theo asks her _ohso_politely to see him off to bed, but then she doesn't say no, so there's no space in his heart (wherever it's gone to) for pity.

But she's still his _best friend_, and he can't help but love her all the same even if she's being such a stupid girl and letting Theo touch her in ways that taint the only purity she could ever have (Slytherin, _remember_?). And, oh, Godricdammit, it gets him all wound up because when it's no one but the two of them he can really see how shattered this is making her in the way her eyes fizzle out completely. He can't say anything, though, and neither can she, because they're Slytherins, and Slytherins don't give two shits about _pure_ and _love_.

He can inside of her, now, that she's devoid of both anyway.

(When's it going to be his turn?)


End file.
